[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 84 (Thursday, June 17, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H4294-H4295]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     SALUTING SONIA SCHREIBER WEITZ

  (Mr. TIERNEY asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Speaker, today on June 17, 2004, the Holocaust 
Center of Boston North, Inc., located in Peabody, Massachusetts, and 
dedicated to the study of the Holocaust, Genocides, and Human Rights, 
will honor my constituent Sonia Schreiber Weitz with the Center's first 
Social Justice and Human Rights Award.
  A Holocaust survivor who experienced the torture and degradation of 
five Nazi concentration camps and Hitler's Death March, Sonia Weitz has 
devoted her life to educating young people to the dangers of bystander 
behavior, the nature of hatred and power of one individual to create 
positive change. An accomplished author and poet, she is committed to 
fighting for human rights and sharing her experiences during the 
Holocaust with audiences of all ages.
  Born in Krakow, Poland in 1928, young Sonia attended public schools

[[Page H4295]]

with both Jewish and non-Jewish friends. Only occasional whispers of 
anti-Semitism marred her early childhood, but in September of 1939, 
when Sonia was 11 years old, Germans invaded Poland and changed her 
life forever. Many of her relatives were murdered, the Gestapo took her 
mother, and she and her remaining family members were sent to a labor 
camp where they remained for more than a year. Sonia and her sister, 
Blanca, were then sent to Auschwitz, while their father and Blanca's 
husband were sent to Mauthausen in Austria. As liberating forces 
approached and the Nazis sought to destroy evidence of the camps, the 
inmates were sent on a death march through the snow and ice to Bergen-
Belsen, in Germany, where the two sisters experienced the worst 
conditions of their enslavement. Finally liberated, they lived in a 
camp for displaced persons for 3 years before immigrating to the United 
States, where Sonia lives today, in Peabody, Massachusetts.
  In her book, ``I Promised I Would Tell,'' Sonia Weitz shares memories 
of Nazi racism, dehumanization and mass murder. ``Who better to write 
about light after darkness than me,'' she says. A co-founder of the 
Holocaust Center North, Ms. Weitz has coordinated clergy conferences, 
media seminars, human rights awareness days, interfaith teen projects, 
and Holocaust survivors' workshops since 1982. She has been an 
appointee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. She is the 
recipient of an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Salem 
State College, the ADL Interfaith Award, the Facing History Human 
Rights Award, and countless other honors.
  Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join my constituents throughout Boston's 
North Shore in honoring this extraordinary human being, Sonia Schreiber 
Weitz, and I ask that my remarks unanimously be allowed to conform with 
the written remarks submitted on this day.

                          ____________________